Chocolate
by KaL KeY
Summary: Life for Johnny wasnt always in Tulsa...before that he lived somewhere else, and events there led to his life that he lives now. Because of this, what did keep him together? What is it that always helped him through everything?...R&R please!


A/N: hey everyone…KaL KeY here! This is my first Outsiders fic…so please be nice to me. Review or flame at the end…any kind of feed back will be welcome.

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Title: Chocolate

Rating: T to be safe

Warning: slight AU (it's a fanfic…they all are slight AU)… it's the outsiders…so drugs, drinking, swearing, and abuse and of course murder.

Pairings: can be slash between Dally and Johnny or brotherly love….which ever you want to take it as.

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My name is Johnathan Andrew Cade. I was born April 13 in Chicago, Illinois to two illegal here in the United States. My mama's name was Maria and my papa's was Roberto, though many called him Rob. My mama and papa loved each other dearly, and they loved me. I was the reason they came here and though papa hadn't wanted me at first, he loved me all the same.

The three of us lived in a small one room apartment, my room was no more then a large closet that mama had turned into a room for me when we first moved there…or when they first moved there since I wasn't born yet. The room, though small and smelled something offal in the summer heat, kept me safe and warm during those snowy nights.

I used to love the snow. I loved it so much that I would insist on celebrating the first snow fall…its different when you're little, only 2. That changed when I was a little older then three. It was no surprise that mama wanted to go to the store to get dinner, it was the anniversary of the day they came to the U.S.A. Papa was out, and so mama took me by the hand. I was wearing my thickest coat in the 20 degree weather.

Mama got what she wanted, laughing as she talked to the clerk, a good friend of hers. She was telling her that she'd forgotten to go shopping for groceries today, and she couldn't let her two favorite guys go hungry. Mama then paid, and we headed home.

I stopped, petting a stray dog even though mama always told me not to. A gun sounded not to far away, but we lived in the worst neighborhood west of the Mississippi, so I paid it no mind. I heard guns go off four or five times a day, and as close as ten feet away. When you live there…well…you learn that fear doesn't help. Mama didn't like it…she…she just didn't, but the people paid good and didn't ask questions, or that's what she told me.

A thump startled me, and I stood, turning towards the sound of the gun to see a man hit the ground, then my mama. I cried out, not from the pain of the bullet that was now in my shoulder but from the pain of the truth. The pain that was in my heart. I was only three, but I'd already seen my share of dead bodies, shoot outs, gun-downs, drive-bys. The guy turned to me, then sighed. He muttered something along the lines of no one believing a kid.

He looked at my mama's dead body, then me. He walked over to me, then bent down, the gun making a clattering sound as it hit the pavement. He looked at me, then my shoulder, then my mama, and I watched him. He looked into my eyes and I saw how scared he looked. The same look mama got when the neighbors fought and she thought they would kill the other one and the police would find out that she and papa didn't have 'papers', which I didn't understand because they had a lot of paper…something's are just to hard for a three year old to understand.

"Sorry kid. Your mum and ya weren't supposed to me 'ere." He said, sighing. For some reason I remembered those words, and I would think of my mama's dark eyes so full of life and know I couldn't blame him. "Get home." He told him. "Go **now**! Get!"

I was scared of him so I scrambled away, running from him and that gun. I ran home, hiding in the corner behind the couch. That's where I stayed till papa came home.

"Maria!" he called, laughing as he came in, not knowing what had happened.

"PAPA!" I cried, throwing my right arm around his legs, my left **arm **hurt too much to move. "Papa! Mama…"

"What happened Johns?" he asked me, bending down to look at me. I heard papa's Columbian friend, another non 'paper' person, moving away from us, leaving the room and going to his room down the hall. I liked Paco…that's what I called him since at three I couldn't remember or pronounce his real name, and he didn't ever mind. I had wandered why he left when he was mama's friend too.

"Papa! He…he shot mama!" I told him, crying. Paco came back in and took me away from papa, who left the apartment. Paco patched me up, getting the bullet out. I didn't feel anything…I was **numb to everything around me, but still have the scare to this day**.

Paco **then** put me to bed, telling me to get some sleep, and he left. He must have used something that was rusted because I ran a fever for days after that. I don't know where papa was because the two times I got up for water he wasn't there.

It took three or four days for the fever to go away enough for me to eat. At three there's not much you can do for yourself, but I did find some crackers to eat. For the next two days I lived off **crackers** and water.

On the second day, about the seventh after mama died, papa came home. He didn't say anything, just put a loaf of bread on the table, then went to him room. He collapsed face down on the bed, passed out cold. I sat there looking threw the open door at him.

I ended sitting there for hours, watching him. I was waiting…waiting for him to get up and cook me dinner. When I finally realized he wasn't going to, it was just past dawn since the sun was coming up when I got down from the chair. **The sunrise** made the room all kinds of golds and pinks.

I went back to my little room, laying down. I was out before my head made full **contact** with the pillow.

I took care of myself the best I could after that, after all…necessity does make people stronger. I ate crackers and peanut butter on bread. I drank water and I sat and watched. I watched papa come in and out, in and out…in and out. He never once looked at me, never acknowledged me. The only thing that mattered to him was the liquor.

I'd seen him drink before, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't like it was then…it wasn't a drink-till-I-pass-out kind of drinking. He'd have a beer every once in a while when mama was around. But after she died…well…you never saw him without some kind of alcoholic thing in his hand.

"Papa?" I tried **one **night, months after mama's death. I had always been patient, and mama had taught me to be **quiet **and good, but a three year old can only do it for so long. "Papa? What wrong?" I asked him. "What 'appen?"

"What happened!" he screamed at me. "I'll tell you what happened! Your mama's dead! She died getting food for you! You should have protected her you worthless piece of shit!" he left shortly after that. I ended up crying myself to sleep on the couch that night.

After that papa screamed every time he saw me. I found that I preferred the quiet papa over the **loud **papa. I should never have said anything.

It was just after my fourth birthday that papa hit me for the first time. It wasn't really a hit…not really. He had been yelling at me and I started to cry. He'd grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked, saying that I didn't have **the **right to cry. After he went back to the bar I swore to never cry in front of him again…I didn't want him pulling my hair ever again.

It didn't mater though. He must have liked the feeling of power it gave him or the pain it caused me because he did it again. It slowly progressed from hair pulling to slaps to punches to full beatings. I learnt to hide if he came home, because if he didn't see me I wasn't there to him.

I was around five when he brought Isabel home. He kept calling her Maria and she would giggle and tell him that he could call her anything he wanted. I didn't like him calling her Maria…Maria was my mama's name and to me it was only my mama's name.

Isabel looked a lot like my mama. Long black hair and dark eyes. Her eyes were brown though…mama and I had black eyes. Dark, dark black eyes that reflected everything we felt while Isabel's were just dark brown black holes that showed nothing.

Even though they looked a lot a like, they were nothing a like, their similarities ended there. My mama had been a sweet, caring, kind woman that loved good and despised evil. This new women was nothing like her…this Isabel.

Within the year she answered to Maria. Two months later, when I was a week from my sixth birthday, he proposed to her. Isabel accepted, laughing and crying.

From that day till about a week after my birthday they argued. She refused to stay there any longer; she wanted a new start with her new life. Isabel's grandmother had died a few months before, leaving a fully paid for house behind. She was determined that it be hers. Once she told papa and made him understand, he agreed. Within two hours of the decision we were packed and on our way in the little car that papa bought some years ago. That was the last I saw of our 'little hole in the wall' as mama called it, and was on my way to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The apartment building burnt down four years later, the first starting in the neighbor's apartment. I guess they finally killed each other.

The new house itself wasn't so bad. I got my own room, a real one. It had a bed and a dresser in there as well as a small closet. There were even kids around my age that I could play with if I was aloud to.

Isabel and papa married two days later. Not 14 days after that they were fighting. They always argued and threw things. It was the only time that papa called her Isabel.

One month after we moved there they were screaming again. I ended up sleeping in the closet, and from that day on I always did. I could escape papa there too. He still hit me, every chance he got too. The more he drank the worse it was…

Chocolate became my outlet. Chocolate cake, chocolate milk, hot chocolate, or even just a piece of plan chocolate.

I had met the Curtis brothers about 2 or 3 months after I moved to Tulsa. Mrs. Curtis always let me come over, even if the three boys and their friends weren't there.

Mrs. Curtis and a boy named Dallas Winston became what held me together. Them and the chocolate. I could count on Mrs. Curtis kissing the top of my head, giving me something chocolaty to eat and Dally would sit next to me telling me all kinds of things as he ate his own piece of what we had.

She reminded me of my mama a lot. She would let me help her with what she was doing. Dally always said that I was stupid and childish for doing it as he **followed **us and Ponyboy, when the younger boy helped out. Mrs. Curtis would smile and tell him to play nice…I think her smile was because even if he complained he would still help out too.

When Mr. and Mrs. Curtis died I was devastated. I sat in the lot, crying. Dally joined me and though he'll deny it he was like any other 15 or 16 year old that lost someone important, he cried, even if it was a few tears, they were still there. I smiled.

"Mrs. Curtis would say 'Good Dallas. Just let it out. Can't always keep it in and be tuff.'" I told him and he chuckled, knowing that it was true He threw his arm around my bruised shoulders. He apologized when he saw me wince.

Then he did something I'll never forget. He kissed the top of my head like Mrs. Curtis always did. "You're an ok kid." He said. I smiled, not only because of what he said but because people had been calling me kid since the man that had killed mama had. "I'll keep an eye on him like I promised." Dally said, looking up and I knew he was talking to Mr. and Mrs. Curtis.

I went home later. Papa was passed out on the couch, a can of beer hanging from his had, poured out onto the floor. Isabel was in her room, most likely high. I turned around, heading back outside wondering if Dally was still at the lot.

"Sorry kid." The man from 11 years ago said in my head.

He didn't have to be sorry. Mama's death doesn't really scare me that much anymore. I don't have many nightmares about it now. If it wasn't for him I would never have met the gang. I just hope he didn't feel too guilty where ever he was.

"You're parents at it?" Dally asked as I made my way to him. "Dad been drinking."

"No." I told him. "He died years ago."

Dally raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. "Let's go to the Curtis's. They need some cheering up and we need a place to crash."

I nodded.

Roberto Anthony Cade died over 11 years ago. He died the same night as Maria Roselle Cade. A Demon of hate and revenge took over his body and now feeds.

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Well…that's it…tell me what you think…I could use some feed back because even if I've read the book like 20 times and seen the move going on 10…I'm not so sure if I got them down or not…maybe it really did suck..well…tell me what you think! i really would like it! and tell me if I should write another or not... if you dont think so then i guess 'The Outsiders' is just something i cant write fics to. 


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